CATHERINE PARR’S burial & SHOCKING CORPSE MUTILATION | First Protestant funeral for English royalty

hi history lovers and welcome or welcome back to the channel where i bring you new videos every friday on all aspects of the past today on history calling we're looking at the groundbreaking funeral of queen catherine parr and at the later disinterments plural and shocking mutilation of her body other than what happened to the russian romanovs which you can hear about in my video on them linked on screen and in the description box the fate of catherine's remains is one of the worst cases of grave and corpse desecration i've come across for a royal and by the end of the video i think you'll understand why [Music] [Music] if you like this kind of content i already have videos on the executions and disinterment of queen's anne boleyn and catherine howard and the funerals of jane seymour and anne of cleves these are all linked below for you please also take a moment to subscribe to the channel with notifications switched on so you never miss an upload give this video a thumbs up and share it with your friends you can follow me on instagram too where my username is history calling there's a link for that in the description box as well alongside links to books movies and tv shows about catherine's life i'm not going to spend much time here on catherine's biography as i already have two videos which cover this and which are linked in the description box suffice to say that although raised a catholic she had converted to protestantism during the course of her life and this was the religion she died in in 1548 at the age of 36. catherine had married four times her third and most famous husband was henry viii but after his death in 1547 she wed thomas seymour who was a brother of queen jane seymour henry's long dead third wife and the mother of the new king young edward vi catherine gave birth to their daughter mary seymour who was named after her stepdaughter princess mary and who was catherine's only biological child here at sudeley castle on the 30th of august 1548 dying from childbirth complications between 2 and 3 a.m on the 5th of september her husband was disgraced the following year when he tried to seize control of his nephew king edward and was ultimately executed on the 20th of march 1549. their little girl was sent to live with catherine willoughby deutscher duchess of suffolk who had been the wife of henry viii's great favorite charles brandon however she disappears from the records as a toddler and presumably died young catherine's body was quickly and banned wrapped in seer cloth which is cloth coated in wax to make it waterproof and placed in a lead coffin with a lead plate over the top of her chest which read kp here lieth queen catherine wife to king henry viii and last the wife of thomas lord of sudley high admiral of england and uncle to king edward vi died 5th of september 1548. the body remained in her privy chamber in the castle while preparations were made for her funeral which took place in the castle's chapel where she was also buried on the 7th of september this was a very speedy burial usually there was a gap of several weeks and a lengthy lying in state before a royal was officially laid to rest what was more the service itself was unlike anything ever seen for an english royal according to a contemporary description of the funeral the chapel had been quote hanged with black cloth garnished with the scoochians of marriages visa king henry viii and her catherine in peel under the crown her own in lozenge under the crown also the arms of the lord admiral that's thomas seymour and hers in peel without crown escutcheons if you're unfamiliar with the term are essentially shields showing coats of arms while pale and lozenge refer to the shape of each escutcheon having catherine's arms shown in a lozenge when they were depicted on their own denoted that she was female the rails were also quote covered with black cloth for the mourners to sit in with stools and cushions accordingly the protestant nature of the ceremony starts to become apparent as the description continues usually the body would have been placed beneath a hearse which in that era meant a structure put over the top of it and ornamented with a paul and candles aka tapers in catherine's case however no hearse was used nor were there any majesties valance or tapers saving two tapers where on were two scootcheons which stood upon the corpse during the service compared to a traditional catholic ceremony for someone of catherine's rank this was a very simple setup and if you see my videos on the funerals of gn seymour and anne of cleves both of whom had catholic ceremonies you'll know the differences the corpse was carried into the chapel in a procession in the following manner first two conductors in black with black staves then gentlemen and esquires then knights then officers of household with their white staves then the gentleman ushers then the summerset herald in the king's coat then the corpse borne by six gentlemen in black gowns with their hoods on their heads then eleven staff torches born on each side by human about the corpse and at each corner and knight for assistance four meaning four nights in total with their hoods on their heads then the lady gian daughter to the lord marquis of dorset chief mourner led by an estate her train borne up by a young lady this is the ten-year-old lady jane grey then six other lady mourners two and two then all ladies and gentle women two and two then human three and three in a rank then all other following with the coffin placed within the railings and all the mourners in their assigned spots the service began the choir sang some sams in english the choice of language as opposed to latin being another clear marker of a protestant service three lessons were then read after which the mourners went in order of rank to give a donation into the church's alms box now dr miles coverdeal who had been catherine's almonder stood up to give the funeral sermon the service was so unusual that he had to make a point of explaining what certain elements of it did and did not signify telling the assembled personages that the money they had to needed was for the use of the less fortunate and would not profit the dead in any way a reference to the money often set aside by catholic royalty and those able to afford it to have prayers and masses said for their souls coverdeal continued that the lighted tapers in the church and around the body were also for the honor of the person and for none other intent nor purpose when the sermon was done coverdale prayed and the congregation answered after which catherine was buried to the sound of a tay dam being sung in english once again by the choir the account of the funeral concludes that and this done after dinner the mourners and the rest that wood returned homeward again the whole thing procession included had taken just one morning again a noticeable break from convention as an adherent of what was called the reformed religion we can only hope that catherine would have approved an alabaster monument was erected over her tomb with a latin inscription written by her chaplain dr pankhurst this monument is very possibly the one depicted in this image published in 1582 and labelled q catherine meaning queen catherine certainly catherine parr was the only protestant english queen to have died up to this point who would have had a tomb i find this slightly flurry english translation of the inscription which has taken some liberties in order to make the whole thing rhyme but it gets the general idea it reads in this new tomb the royal catherine lies flower of her sex renowned great and wise a wife by every nuptial virtue known and faithful partner once of henry's throne to see more next her plighted hand she yields seymour who neptune's trident justly wields from him a beauteous daughter blessed her arms an infant copy of her parents charms when now seven days this infant flower had bloomed heaven in its wrath the mother's soul resumed no doubt catherine would have been quite happy if this had been the end of the story for her earthly remains unfortunately it wasn't and what happened to her body in later centuries was increasingly appalling for 234 years the body of catherine parr lay in peace her former home and the chapel in which she had been buried fell into rack and ruin her original tomb was lost and the exact location of her grave was forgotten by many and became an issue of hearsay in 1782 however grief hunters decided that this wasn't good enough and that they wanted an answer to the question of exactly where the queen lay this is where the disgraceful treatment of her remains began in may of that year some female visitors to the castle who had read that catherine was buried in the chapel there decided they wanted to see for themselves the land was now owned by a lord rivers but there is no indication as to whether they had his permission to have the sight dug instead as near as we can tell they showed up and upon seeing a piece of alabaster in the corner of a wall which they determined might be part of the tomb effigy i showed you earlier and which does indeed match the robes that lily was wearing they directed that the ground be dug on that spot when they found the coffin they had it opened in two places over the chest and face as you see in this image and the seer cloth around the head unwrapped revealing the features and particularly the eyes in perfect preservation suddenly alarmed at the site however and disgusted by the smell from the seer cloth they had the grave filled in again without even replacing the cloth or lead coffin covering this story was related to the society of antiquaries in 1787 by the reverend treadway nash who we're going to hear more of in a minute and seems believable enough as he was writing just five years later had been to catherine's grave himself and evidently spoken to those present during the initial opening of her coffin we have another account written by someone who saw her remains in the 1780s though which doesn't tally with this story this is a secondhand account of the discovery of catherine's remains written by a mr brooks of reading he stated that a john lucas who was a tenant of lord rivers found catherine in the summer of 1782 just where she had been left in 1548 in aladdin coffin approximately two feet beneath the surface and with the breastplate still in place with its inscription according to brooks john lucas decided that he wanted to see the dead queen for himself and so tore open the top of the coffin and exposed the body lucas who had anticipated only a skeleton to his great surprise found the whole body wrapped in six or seven seer cloths of linen entire and uncorrupted although it had laying there upwards of 230 years his unwarrantable curiosity led him also to make an incision through the seer cloths which covered one of the arms of the corpse the flesh of which at that time was white and moist i was very much displeased at the forwardness of lucas who of his own head opened the coffin it would have been quite sufficient to have found it and then to have made a report of it to lord rivers or myself there is no mention of any women here or of catherine's face being exposed brooks may have expressed indignation at the mistreatment of her remains by lucas however he soon proved that he wasn't any better the following summer he and his son wrote sootly and having heard lucas's account of what had happened in 1782 brooks wrote that i directed the earth to be once more removed to satisfy my own curiosity and found lucas's account of the coffin and corpse to be just as he had represented them with this difference that the body was then grown quite fetid and the flesh where the incision had been made was brown and in a state of putrefaction in consequence of the air having been let in upon it the stench of the corpse made my son quite sick brooks jr nevertheless copied out the transcription on catherine's coffin plate and the grave was filled in again there are a few things i'd like to note from these two episodes first it's really not clear if catherine's tomb was opened twice in 1782 or not perhaps the story of the women was made up to deflect blame away from john lucas for having opened up the grave and damaged the body in such a way that it rapidly decomposed if her face had been exposed to the air at that point why did brooks not mention it when describing his view of the body in 1783 instead he says only that her arm was exposed and rotting it's conceivable that he was the one who first exposed her face then put about the story that it had been done the previous year so that he wouldn't have to take responsibility for his actions equally brooks may have written his account much later and made errors in the details the earliest published version of it i can find dates to 1857 when he would have been long dead and had been provided by his daughter julia maybe she even tweaked some of the details to paint her father in a better light second in my opinion i don't see that it was necessary to dig catherine up at all had she not been famous no one would have cared about her burial the exact spot her tomb was in was no longer known but the general location of her burial probably to within a matter of 50 feet inside the ruined chapel was still remembered there was also no question of her remains being anyone else and there was no great mystery around her cause of death that a view of her body might have solved unlike when anne boleyn was disinterred catherine also wasn't dug up because repairs had to be made to the fabric of the building in which her remains were housed despite his complaints about lucas's behavior brooks was perfectly upfront about the fact that he reopened catherine's grave for the exact same reasons a year later his own curiosity i agree with his initial assessment that once the coffin had been located it should have been reburied and left alone the lead plate on it made it perfectly clear who it contained third from the contemporary description and drawing of her body catherine is an excellent example of just what a good and quick embalming combined with an airtight lead coffin can achieve her remains were in remarkable condition and had she just been left alone they'd no doubt have remained that way for much longer yet as soon as her coffin was opened and her wrappings pierced the body began to rot at a highly accelerated pace which is why brook senior and junior found her in such disgusting condition just a year after the first breach things were going to get much worse however neither the knowledge of exactly where she could be found was out and it was known what a shallow grave she was in it was open season on the queen's body the 19th century historical writer agnes strickland said that a friend of hers named gian porter was told several years after the event by an old woman that the coffin had been opened in 1784 by a band of ruffians and the remains thrown on a rubbish heap according to this woman catherine had been wearing the remains of costly burial clothes specifically a dress and shoes and her feet were very small and all her proportions extremely delicate the lady even said that catherine was still beautiful with perfect features but she rapidly began to decay again this account doesn't chime at all with the idea that her face had been exposed to the elements since 1782 the body was then apparently reburied at the insistence of the local vicar to be honest i have my doubts about this story it's a third hand account traced back to an unnamed woman strickland says was ancient and remembering an event from years earlier the claim that catherine was wearing clothes also doesn't match any other account all of which talk only about the seer cloth the body was wrapped in this is a very weak pearly referenced chain of evidence and it's possible that this story if it happened at all is being confused with a later opening in 1792 which i'll come to shortly first however we return to a much more reliable account that of treadway nash who wrote that he and a few others exhumed catherine on the 14th of october 1786 and made what was by 18th century standards a scientific study of her remains he declared that upon opening the ground and heaving up the lead we find the face totally decayed the bones only remaining the teeth which were sound had fallen out of their sockets the body i believe is perfect as it has never been opened we thought it in delicate and indecent to uncover it but observing the left hand to lie at a small distance from the body we took off this seer cloth and found the hand and nails perfect but of a brownish color this ear cloth consisted of many folds of coarse linen dipped in wax tar and perhaps some gums over this was wrapped a sheet of lead fitted exactly close to the body he added that he'd seen no wooden coffin remaining and that catherine must have been petite because the lead around her body was only five feet four inches long nash also noted that rabbits were able to scratch very irreverently about the royal corpse in its current location and wish that the queen might be soldered up in a new coffin and buried somewhere safer where she couldn't be constantly disinterred a bit ironic given what he'd just done but there you go this wasn't done and for that reason in 1792 catherine would suffer her worst desecration we have an account of what happened from a contemporary magazine this states that early in 1792 two men showed up at sootly castle apparently with the intention of stealing catherine's body they were sent away by a relation of the tenant this might therefore have been a relation of john lucas and it was decided that for her own protection catherine's grave should be made more secure this tenant therefore ordered some of his servants to dig a new much deeper grave in the late spring or early summer this episode turned into a complete disaster however and it's the reason i list catherine as the victim of one of the worst royal grave desecrations i'm aware of here's what apparently happened an invitation to dine was given to several neighbors and after dinner all the persons present except the tenant attended to remove the body unfortunately for the remains the glass had circulated too quickly and when the body was taken up tis shocking to relate or even to think of this infernal business some of them proceeded to the greatest indecencies by pulling off her hair of a beautiful yellow and knocking her teeth out then with a speed cut off her head and violently pulled off her arms and even proceeded to a higher pitch of brutality by stabbing an iron bar several times through her then threw the mutilated body into the new grave after this bunch of frankly deprived drunks were done with her catherine was left until the 18th of july 1817 when she was disinterred again at the behest of the reverend john litz then bishop of sudelly with a view to riding some of the wrongs which had been done to her one of the men present and mr e.t brown later described the events of that day her coffin was found upside down in a walled grave where it had supposedly been placed on the orders of john lucas there was now nothing left of catherine whose body had been in perfect condition just 35 years earlier except a skeleton a clump of dirty hair and a few pieces of seer cloth under her skull numerous pieces of her hair had been taken during the previous openings so much so that brian was able to compare this dirty clump after washing to a lock he already had in his possession and catherine was described as having blonde or golden auburn hair which tended to curl naturally i couldn't find a public domain or creative commons image of any of these locks but if you want to do a quick google search you will certainly see some of them and it definitely looks blonde to me which is interesting because this doesn't match up with what we see in a lot of portraits of catherine there are also images of some purported teeth of the queen available online ivy had penetrated the heavily damaged coffin and was growing throughout it but the breastplate with the original inscription was found and a rubbing myrevit which is where this image comes from brown had the pieces of the broken coffin kneeled back together to reform its shape and measured them contrary to what nash had said in 1787 the coffin was now 5 feet 10 inches long though it may well be that having been broken and put back together its dimensions had changed this reconstituted coffin was placed in the nearby tomb of lord chandos in saint mary's chapel at soodley castle and has remained there ever since though when we look at this 1850 image of the chapel it must be said that it wasn't in great shape either the last fragment of her original effigy was placed behind a small iron grit which can be seen in this image published in the 1870s but i'm unaware if it's still in existence today perhaps if someone listening has been to visit swoodley castle they can let me know in the comments this new monument was erected to the queen in the 19th century however and unlike her previous one it has so far remained intact and can still be seen today if you visit what is hopefully katherine's final resting place this brings us to the end of this week's video remember to give it a like share it with your friends and subscribe to the channel and let me know below what you think of the treatment of catherine's remains in the 1780s and 90s if you're in the mood for some more tudor bodies try my videos on the disinterment of ann berlin and others by the victorians or on whether or not henry viii's body exploded after his death i'll be back next week with a new video and until then keep learning

Channel: History Calling

Views: 874,051

Keywords: What happened when royalty died, British royal funerals, first protestant funeral for royalty, first protestant funeral, shocking corpse mutilation, Six wives documentary, funeral of a queen, A history of mourning, burying a queen, a funeral fit for a queen, Tudors documentary, Catherine Parr, Katherine Parr, Kathryn Parr

Id: p6lPB4uzmwI

Length: 22min 35sec (1355 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 10 2021